Loss of Epigenetic Information as a Cause of Mammalian Aging

ImAge: an imaging approach to quantitate aging and rejuvenation

“…Such biomarkers should perform better, compared to chronological age, to quantitate health risks and thus improve the effectiveness and quality of care in mid-life and old age while reducing associated cost [3][4][5][6].Twelve interconnected distinctive features were proposed to drive aging [7]. One of them, epigenetic alterations, are likely to play a major role and the loss of epigenetic information was proposed to be a cause of mammalian aging [8]. Indeed, the advent of partial reprogramming provides a mounting evidence that transient expression of Yamanaka's OSKM factors [9] is sufficient for turning back the clock on at least some functional readouts of organs and tissues in old mice [10,11].…”